


It Began with a Blight

by xbedhead



Category: Slow West (2015)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Gen, scene filler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 07:27:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5618656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xbedhead/pseuds/xbedhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’d only wanted a hot meal. </p><p>Instead, what he got was more death and confirmation that his outlook on life – bleak as it was – was perfectly justified. </p><p>It wasn’t enough, but…he never wanted any of this. Not for him, not for the kid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Began with a Blight

**Author's Note:**

> Just my thoughts on what might be going through Silas' head after the Trading Post scene. Given the few details we know about him, it provides some back story for his character based on actual historical events. Would love to hear your thoughts!
> 
> This is unbeta'd.

_Yankee Doodle went to town…_

He’d only wanted a hot meal. 

Instead, what he got was more death and confirmation that his outlook on life – bleak as it was – was perfectly justified. The fact that the kid had to be the one to pull the trigger made it worse, though he supposed it was inevitable. If Jay was gonna make it in the West, he had to learn the way of the gun. 

Just as Silas had.

But it hadn’t always been that way. 

_A-riding on a pony…_

When he and his mother left County Kerry for Canada – both of them skin and bones in the midst of The Great Famine – she’d kept his hunger-addled mind from disappearing into the musty darkness of the ship’s hold by reading to him. 

Rita Selleck was a practical woman – there would be no use for Gaelic where they were headed. Outdated newspaper articles, church hymnals, dusty copies of _The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood_ – anything she could get her hands on. Though it wasn’t saying much, by the time they docked at Grosse Isle, Silas could read English as well as his mother, who’d been taught by the nuns as her father had rallied for Catholic secession. 

_He stuck a feather in his hat…_

Rita never made it off the island; her frail body weak from years of malnutrition and passing what little food she had on to her only surviving son. She fell victim to typhus like thousands of their fellow countrymen. 

Silas had been scooped up on the docks, keeping his head down, running errands, lifting loads far too heavy for a boy of thirteen – whatever he could to earn a meal each day. The food was never enough, though, and he’d been caught snatching a basket of hot rolls from the immigration office mess. Rather than be shot or thrown in prison for labor even more demanding than what he’d already performed the last two years, he smuggled himself onto a boat headed for the main land and disappeared amidst the pulsing crowd.

_And called it macaroni._

Which was where Payne found him a year or so later, still hungry, dirty and itching for a chance to prove his worth. 

Under Payne’s fledgling roof, he learned many things – how to shoot, how to ride, how to sleep with one eye open. Nothing in life was free and whatever he had, he understood very quickly that somebody was waiting around the next corner, ready to take it from him. So Silas, in turn, learned to take; sometimes prying it from the still-warm fingers of dead men who found the wrong end of his bullet. 

He hated himself for that. Hated himself for many things.

But those were days he didn’t want to think of any longer. Dwelling on the past sent you nowhere. 

It wasn’t enough, but…he never wanted any of this. Not for him, not for the kid. Not for those two… _damnit_.


End file.
